Grandma's Beta Testing: Lean Pockets Whole-Grain

I have so many opinions, it seems like time to start writing down some of them.  I like the thought of commenting on the Bruce Willis movie I watched last night, the book I liked or put down in boredom, the horrible women's magazines in the mammogram waiting room at the James (maybe later), and the food I eat. And why not start today? I thought, as I contemplated writing a sarcastic letter to the Lean Pockets people.

I don't see much point in writing to them, though.  Packaged foods like this are not really food, but products, a product created with endless meetings and expensive market research, which is all about selling you on it, and they're not going to listen to me.  But you might be glad to know what you're actually getting when you buy Lean Pockets.  Whole-grain, to make you think it's healthy.

According to the label, the 250-calorie Lean Pocket I managed to eat at lunch today had 8(!) grams of fat, 38 grams of carbohydrates (!), of which 11 g were sugars, only 9 grams of protein, one small bite of broccoli, and no turkey.  I mean, I couldn't taste or see any turkey at all.

In other words, this is another product that is basically fat and carbs, the road to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.  It will not help you get your minimum protein for the day.  (There are calculators to figure your requirement online).  Since protein was one of the things that was restricted on the kidney diet, I counted grams for years.  For me, 45 grams a day is a minimum need.  That's 15 grams per meal. Today I had to finish my lunch with some nuts to make up for the lack.

So this was far from a complete lunch.  But it did give me some partially hydrogenated oils and palm oil to think about.  Not good.  And soy flour, which is not for me, as I once had breast cancer that was estrogen-receptive.And you don't need to hear all the strange non-foods that are in this.   Typing out the additives would make me dizzy.

I have an excuse for picking up this frozen dish on the fly yesterday, you know - but who needs to hear it?  There are good things to say about it, compared to fast foods, and their web site would be glad to tell you.  And who can criticize the makers of such delicious depravities as Butterfingers and DiGiorno's pizza?  They make lots of candy and pizzas, in fact - look up Nestle Brands if you want to see their sweep.  Then look them up on Wikipedia and think about the long-standing boycott of Nestle foods because of the infant formula controversy, rain-forest destruction, etc. They're hard to boycott, it's true - they're everywhere. In the world, and in the supermarket

Once again it turns out the personal is political, including what you personally put in your mouth. Sounds like an ethical matter, in the end, a matter of compassion for yourself and quite a few others. 

On Becoming Engaged

[image - Peter Singer with a friend]
Spiritual practice has been creeping up on me and making me think about how I act. This is not really a Zen thing, or a Buddhist thing. Ethics can creep up on anyone. Right now my consciousness is being impacted by Peter Singer, a young guy (younger than me) who teaches Bioethics at Princeton and writes books about our relationship to the world. He is a philosopher, but aspires to be the kind whose thinking and scholarship reaches out to the real world outside academic circles. Years ago I read his manifesto Animal Liberation, and it led me to avoid meat for quite a while, until the kidney diet led me to put "high-biological-quality protein" in my diet. I was relieved to go back to something more like the diet of my childhood (though with numerous restrictions), an easier way for me to cook, and I have avoided Peter Singer ever since. I know you understand.

But this has been creeping up on me - this realization that though there are many ways I don't live lavishly, I am an American, and I do live well. It's been Haiti, of course, night after night on the news, in-your-face the realization that this country 500 miles from our border lived in abject poverty as it was. Then came the latest issue of Tricycle, the Buddhist magazine, which had a little piece about the need for a national Buddhist relief effort to address poverty. It mentioned a group called Buddhist Global Relief. I looked them up. I noticed that one of their advisors is David Loy, who teaches in a nearby city, and whose interest is "engaged Buddhism." An interesting term. Tom got to looking up Loy and found a video of him talking that we both want to watch.

Then I stopped in at the library yesterday and as usual scanned the new books shelves with keen interest. We have "the best public library in America," one of the 83 things I am often grateful for. There on the shelf sat an unpretentious book with a red cover: The Live You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty. By Peter Singer. I picked it up, looked it over, sighed, and put it in my bag.

Undertaking a meditation practice seems simple at first. You want to de-stress. Or to heal. Some personal desire. But if that becomes a Zen practice, the goal begins to shift. You learn about this something called "enlightenment." Teachers talk about happiness, joy, peace of mind. "This very place is the Lotus Land," we chant together. Nirvana is out there if we keep practicing.

I think if the Buddha came back and gave a little talk, he might look out over the crowd and begin, "Nirvana is not La-la Land." No, becoming more aware means aware of everything. One of those things is the vast tragic inequality of wealth on this planet, and the extent of poverty. As I sat in an expensive, comfortable bed last night and read the first chapter of Singer's book, the facts began to sink into me. That's one thing. But where this book is headed is a direct confrontation with my lifestyle, and the luxuries I enjoy.

Already the book had me thinking. I thought, This is an important book. I want to own it. It is very easy to buy on Amazon with one click. I can get it used Like New for $10 plus $3.99 shipping. That's $14. Well, I thought, I do have this library copy.

I read on. Suddenly I thought how I was planning to go to the church auction this year, a fundraiser, $12 at the door, but you get a great dinner. I was planning to buy my friend Bob's Turkish Coffee breakfast there for $14 - but the money goes to the church. I already give money to the church, as I give to NPR, things that support my lifestyle. I don't have to do the auction. That $26 right there.

I read on, as Singer established with footnotes to my satisfaction that children die for want of a measles vaccine or medical care when they get measles. I had the two-week measles as a child. (As my mother once remarked thoughtfully, "Maybe that's what happened to you.") My daughter had the vaccine. I thought about how we'd feel if her son, my grandson died. One child. In the poorest nations one in five children dies before the age of five. One in five.

Although this was striking home, I kept reading. That led me to think about how Sheba is due this month for her shots, feline leukemia and rabies. She doesn't go out, no animals come in, contacting these diseases is very unlikely. The shots cost $60.

There is this figure Singer keeps referring to: $1.25 a day. That's what an individual needs to buy food, shelter, water, clothing, medical care, and education enough to lift them out of extreme poverty. That's very different from our idea of poverty here in the US, where

97 percent of those classified by the Census Bureau as poor own a color TV. Three quarters of them own a car. Three quarters of them have air-conditioning. Three quarters of them have a VCR or DVD player.

Extreme poverty is better defined by cases. It is where you die for lack of a mosquito net.

I don't know how to round this off. Talk about strict Zen, as some of us have been doing. I don't think Singer is a Zen master, but he seems to dealing me the hardest instructions I've had yet. Give up my DSL? I don't think so.

What you can get away with.

The list on the silver bulletin board on my refrigerator door reads

food
rest
exercise
meditate
fun in its many forms

If I had to narrow it down to what's necessary for survival, I'd put

food
rest
exercise

. . . much as I love fun, you can go a whole lifetime without it. Some people do.

(Strictly speaking, you don't have to exercise to stay alive, but if you find yourselves comatose in a hospital, someone will move your limbs around and massage them, by hand or mechanical pumps, or before very long you'd be quite unable to stand or use any muscles. As for meditation, many people never do it after infancy when it seems to come naturally in the form of rapt absorption in an object, seeing the world in one's toes, or repeating endlessly a mantra, such as "mine, mine, MINE.")

Many people recognize Eat, Pray, Love as the title of a best-selling book. I haven't read it, but I imagine the author also rested and moved about. I don't think that book's about survival. More like "finding happiness," I guess, which we Americans believe in profoundly, that happiness is an object, a treasure, that can be found somewhere. Somewhere else. Like an Easter egg hunt.

What gave rise to my little list was a decline in my happiness last night, a muzzy, bored mood, a fatigue coupled with insomnia, and a desire to eat all kinds of things at 1:00 in the morning. That could read "things I should not eat," which is most everything for someone with kidney disease. Certainly on that Don't list are cashews and all the potato chips in the house. Fortunately, there weren't too many.

Faithful readers know I have kidney failure, and am very close to needing dialysis or a transplant. Kidneys are really the center and soul of your body, in charge of your cells getting the nourishment they need. Whatever you eat, the kidneys sort out, and send the excess along the trash conveyors of your elimination system. A piece of this is keeping your electrolytes in balance. To do this, healthy kidneys discard extra salt and phosphates (as found in Dove ice cream bars) and potassium (as found in potato chips). Pathetic little kidneys like mine do their best, but can't keep up at all with the standard American diet. So my body informed me this morning when I woke up with a familiar headache and a salty taste in my mouth.

Thus we have again a new vow, yes, maybe it's deeper than that - maybe it's a realization that there's no way to get away with eating the way I've been eating lately.

I don't think any of the sweet and spiritually advanced people who read my blog would at this moment feel haughtily superior to me. We all know about problems with food. I myself once knew an eating problem intimately, when I gained a lot of weight, so much that I decided I had to "go on a diet" to even stand being around myself.

I believed, and still do, that to lose weight I have to burn more than I eat. Back then that meant eat less than I burned, because I was as far from physically active as you can get and still climb stairs. I went on that diet rigidly. That was it. No "cheating." I knew that every mouthful actually counts, including the crumbs in the Oreo package. From somewhere I had gleaned a slogan:

A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.

I set myself to eat 1200 calories a day, which meant I was always hungry. I was obsessive about measuring and writing down what I ate. I carried lunch to work - I recall peanut-butter and applesauce sandwiches. A yogurt for breakfast. I counted the tablespoon of cream I used in the coffee I drank a lot of back then. I allowed 150 calories for the one treat of the day, 1/2 cup of ice cream before bed, which I ate with a reverence I have seldom brought to prayer. I did.not.ever.cheat. Living like this (and smoking cigarettes) I lost 1 1/2 pounds a week. Taking off thirty pounds was thus very very slow. But I did it.

Wouldn't you say a person like that could manage a renal (kidney) diet? It is not even calorie limited. You can have all the organic shortbread cookies you want. All the white bread. A lot of vegetables, if you're careful to check their potassium level - no binging on guacamole, for instance, very little tomato, no potatoes. Even in chip form. Especially in chip form, dusted with salt. Did I say, no salt?

That radical dieter was the person I was some thirty years ago. Rigid systems suited me more at that time, a personal preference that has melted around the edges. Now what I have to count on to keep me on track is an understanding of cause and effect.

That about sums that up. Today I am back on the renal diet with a new ferocity, aware of another decline in kidney function on my last labs, as well as my subjective experience. Maybe meditation practice can help me stay in touch with the reality here.

In one of his recorded talks, Jack Kornfield says that a student summed up karma pretty well: "You don't get away with nothing."

When I first heard that I laughed. I thought it was a joke.

Giving in

Article in today's NYTimes about how people head for their internet connections to the outside world first thing in the morning. Kids sleep with their phones in hand. Of course, this is deplored as taking us away from the traditional morning activities of a certain privileged demographic (us), like walking the dog or helping the kids find their homework. Yes, I think the dog should be walked. I also think there's a certain Luddite resistance to change.

If I tell you I remember when television came in, you will think I am 66 11/12 years old, and so last century. I try to think of it as accumulated wisdom, or at least experience. Television. We were all fascinated by it, stunned by the availability of entertainment. Until then I had been lucky to go to the local movies once a week, where I would patiently sit through an entire double feature, even cowboy movies. They were movies. I loved them.

I had a girlfriend whose household had the magic box, and she and I used to watch all the sitcoms we possibly could. It all pleased us, though it was aimed at adults, and I suppose we didn't understand most of what went on. We liked Topper, and My Favorite Bachelor. I knew a kid who actually sat and watched test patterns, waiting for the programming to start. Parents, surly about the whole phenomenon ("Radio was good enough for me"), became fixated on watching the evening news with Walter Cronkite. Then, hearing other grownups talk about actually indulging in TV, my own parents allowed themselves to watch Sid Caesar and the Ed Sullivan show. Thus I got to see the American debut of an English singing sensation.

I have a point here and I am wandering toward it as you can when you have no editors to please. It is this - let us stop berating email and texting and Facebook and admit it - we like this stuff. What's wrong with that? A Zen Teacher I used to work with had a way of saying things that struck home for me. In one talk he referred to simple desires, and he shocked some earnest vegetarians by saying, "If you want a Big Mac, go ahead and have one, and enjoy it. Be with it all the way." The idea was, it doesn't have to be a big thing.

Doesn't it sometimes seem like we spend our lives resisting ourselves? There are impulses well worth resisting, arson, infidelity, just one cigarette, but that doesn't mean goodness is purchased through self-denial. Sometimes I think about the string of stupid diets I've been on in my life, thinking that being slimmer or abstractly "healthier" would translate into happiness. It didn't.

I hate thinking about that self-denial. I mean, one of these diets, prescribed by an alternative MD, had me off all gluten, dairy, and sugar. You could hardly find gluten-free products at the time. When this doctor intuited that I should stop eating potatoes and drinking water, I finally said No. But I had wasted months concocting unpleasant milkshakes with all sorts of stuff in them. I regret that now that my kidneys are wearing out, because I really do have to follow a diet, no choice. The experience of the last years confirms the medical wisdom: limit potassium, phosphates, protein and, God help me, salt. I can't binge on this diet. Eating the wrong things overloads my poor kidneys, and I get a major congestion headache or an episode of arrythmia, or lie awake all night feeling the ribs I treated myself to because it was my birthday.

There actually is more to life than food, that's just one example. In fact, we Americans obviously do indulge too much in food, mindlessly, I think. The real thing is to become intimate with yourself and your cravings. Does this circle me back to the fact that I, too, get up, make coffee, and check my e-mail? Yes. Facebook, yes. Maybe someone else is online at 5:00 a.m.

I can make a logical argument for all this internet connection, but it really isn't about logic - it's about enjoying what we decide to do. This can be a challenge when it comes to eating that Big Mac, which I did not long ago. In reality, it is precooked and never warm enough. But eating it reminded me of these realities, and stopped the craving for that ideal Big Mac they advertise, at least for a while.

Who's on first?

Every morning around 3:00 a.m. Tricycle, the Buddhist Magazine, sends me a Daily Dharma. I like to imagine it is the one cool thing someone with a clerical-level job gets to do. It might not be 3:00 a.m. where they are, they could be in England or China. They don't have to speak perfect English; all they have to do is transcribe a few lines from a book or article. It's a small thing, but I enjoy getting it among the 87 ads and maybe one personal message I download every morning. This morning it is a quote from Michael Wenger, who informs me, I am in charge, just like all those Much-too-positive Thinking books I've given away. Here's the whole thing:

The perfect student is you. You have within you all the ingredients you need to practice. You are in charge, and once you realize this you will seek—and find—all the help you need.

Actually, the place I am at in life this moment is that of a fallen leaf being carried down a swollen river. To make this telegraphically short, I spent my life being told I was in charge of my destiny, believing in the power of personal will and intention, and trying to Do Things. The old Chinese way of seeing life calls this yang, a sharp, pointy approach.

That gets us to now, when I find increasingly that my body trumps all my intentions, or more precisely, that I am aging fast, and I don't get a week off just because I want it. e.g. Last week, I spent three days in the hospital with a mean infection. Slowly, with physical therapy, I am getting back my very small bit of conditioning. And yesterday morning I was sitting talking quietly with Tom when I went into tachycardia. I felt my heart start pounding in my chest. I became short of breath getting dressed. Something new.

We are not unprepared for it - I am wearing a heart event monitor to try and catch the next "episode" of arrythmia - so we had the technology to record this a couple of times and transmit it by land line to some strange place of business that might be on the moon and is open to receive these calls 24/7/365, quite unlike the actual doctor. There, we are told, a knowledgeable person will read the results and they will be transmitted, maybe, to the doctor. I imagine the vague copies of my little printout lost on the guy's desk in a flurry of faxes and pens from pharmaceutical companies. So doing my "you're in charge" part, I called the cardiologist's office this morning to let him know about this.

If you want to feel blown around like a helpless little sailboat on the raging ocean, try getting a message through to a specialist. His nurse's voicemail informs Wun that "Leaving multiple messages will not advance the priority of your call." She means, "Please don't keep calling and crying and screaming and leaving incoherent messages. We'll get to you if we think you're important." What is wrong with these people?

Actually, I know. They are trying to make some order of the endless tide of the frantically ill and dying that washes up on their doorstep. Think about it - a cardiologist never treats a healthy person. But it is exactly this bureaucratic approach that makes western medicine a nightmare, and means someone is punching an IV into your arm at 3:00 a.m. when you're going home the next morning.

When you deal with the western medical establishment, you battle endlessly to have the tiniest bit of control over your own life, to convince people that you must not, no, never, be given steroids in any form, no matter what they usually do. To get the doctor to acknowledge your husband's presence in the room, sometimes to acknowledge yours. It is a perfect recipe for the disastrous loss of hope and any sense of self.

I don't mean ssssssself, that annoying construct Zen wants to help us de-construct. I mean just being, being alive, being real, being you. I suppose it was in the spirit of insurrection that I smuggled a little packet of salt into the hospital last week. They put me on the renal diet, which they interpret ferociously to mean measured grams of unadorned food. Sometimes the menu calls the food "herbed" but those herbs have been dead a very long time. Maybe all I could do to be Me in that place was gleefully sprinkle a little salt on the hamburger that came in a white bread bun without mustard, ketchup, or god forbid, dill pickle. Sometimes you feel like committing suicide by eating a hot fudge sundae (high phosphate).

Time to go to the acupuncturist, who does his best to keep me well. So I'll cut this off. The image: Elizabeth Taylor with her dog. Once I said to Tom bitterly, "Elizabeth Taylor gets better medical care than I do." He said, "Jeanne, Elizabeth Taylor's dog gets better medical care than you do." Too true.